


Joker Gets An Inflatable Boxing Glove And Punches Akechi In The Head

by jokersforkliftlicense



Series: Joker Gets A/An X [4]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Hospitals, Not Beta Read, Slapstick, We Die Like Men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29255919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokersforkliftlicense/pseuds/jokersforkliftlicense
Series: Joker Gets A/An X [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095356
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Joker Gets An Inflatable Boxing Glove And Punches Akechi In The Head

“I’ll reveal your true form,” he said, before punching Akechi in the side of his head. The kid detective was sent flying across the room, the base of his spine the first point of contact with the shelving unit. Bric-a-brac from various outlets in Tokyo were knocked about, but thankfully nothing was broken.

“You idiot, are you quite insane?!” He flashed his teeth. “Do you want to die?!”

“Haha, relax, Akechi,” Ryuji laughed, wrapping an arm around his shoulders before having it immediately thrown off. “This is just a thing we do.” He approached Joker, said ‘show me your true form’, and cold-cocked him in the back of the head. “See?”

“You could have broken my jaw, you imbecile,” the detective insisted. “I swear your brains are all on airplane mode.” Joker smiled, slightly dazed, from the couch, as Ryuji helped him back up.

“Don’t be so overdramatic,” Joker insisted, his nose already bleeding. “I was never going to break anything! That’s what the boxing glove is for!” He held up his punching hand, enclosed in a rubber ball that reads ‘Funky Punch’. Admittedly, Akechi caught himself thinking, he probably should have sensed the danger when he walked into the attic for their meeting, no one other than Ryuji and Joker were around, and both of them were wearing inflatable boxing gloves.

He also caught himself thinking that it was the first time in a while that someone had even interacted with him physically. He spent most of his time by himself, the most contact he ever seemed to get was shaking hands with the various losers of the broadcast TV world. Being punched in the head was sudden, and he was fairly certain his vertebrae had been pretty badly damaged on impact, but there was something almost soothing about being… interfaced with? Even if the method of that interfacing was being clothes-lined walking across a room. In fact, now that he had started this line of thought, he was finding it difficult to stop. The feeling of Joker’s, granted, covered hand on his face was giving him a feeling of fuzziness that he couldn’t explain, but which was probably what these losers felt when they were around each other because of their friendship or whatever. It was stupid. These thoughts were stupid. Time to move on—

“Bro, are you crying?” Ryuji asked, an eyebrow cocked. Joker looked on, partially in amusement, but his usual smug half-smile was betrayed by a broader vibe of concern. Akechi gritted his teeth, hoping he could dry his tear ducts through sheer rage.

“You.” He turned to Ryuji, who now looked like he was in a police line-up having just set fire to an orphanage. “The glove. Hand it over.” Akechi’s tone was volcanic. The glitzy detective prince was somewhere, but not here.

“The… the… the what?” he stammered, not really sure how to respond to this sudden change of tone. Akechi didn’t bother to ask twice, moving swiftly to close the distance and tear the little strap holding the boxing glove to Ryuji’s hand and extracting it before attaching it to his own. Finally, he turned to Joker, who was no longer smiling.

“Show me your true form.”

An hour had passed. Makoto came down the hospital corridor, a small bouquet of flowers - she had read somewhere that you’re supposed to buy them for hospital patients, and hoped he wouldn’t get the wrong idea - to find Akechi sat in one of the chairs outside a patient’s room. She stood before him, crossing her arms, expectantly.

“I’m sorry, alright?”

“You’re sorry?” Makoto parroted, not even needing to play with the cadence to let him know how empty his apology sounded.

“Yes, I’m sorry! I got carried away.”

“You grabbed him by the shoulder, shoved him to the ground and tried to pile-drive him through the floor into the café.” She shook her head. “There are splinters all over his face. His jaw is broken.”

“Yeah, well,” he reached behind himself to rub his back, “my lumbar aches, so I think we’re even.”

“Ugh. Seriously, Akechi, see a therapist.” She sighed, shaking her head. “Or, at the very least, stop trying to kill Joker. It’s highly inconvenient.” Akechi merely agreed to consider her request, sufficient apparently to get her to leave him alone as she wandered into Joker’s room, but all he could hear, rolling around in his mind, was ‘kill Joker’, along with the sensation of the deflated boxing glove burning a hole in his coat pocket. There would be a second round, but there would not be a third.


End file.
